“That wasn’t me,” Ness says. “I didn’t do it.”

Of course that was him, of course he did it. What is he running his mouth about?

I fall on my back, breathing in and out, in and out. He hovers over me. He’s been threatened by Maribelle left and right, but this is the first time I’ve seen pure concern on his face. I massage my neck while my heart runs wild.

“I’m sorry. That happens sometimes,” Ness says as he helps me up, resting me against the wall closest to the door. “Turning into other people when I sleep.”

I’m so thrown by all of this—the strangling and the apology and the opening up.

It takes me a minute, but I get the words out: “Who is he?”

Ness sits against the opposite wall. There couldn’t be more space between us. “He was a trafficker who tried killing me that night on the dock. So I killed him first.”

I figured Ness had taken a life before, but the confirmation still pins me. I’m afraid to ask, but I have to know. “So those other people I’ve seen you turn into . . .”

“I don’t know who you’ve seen or haven’t seen, but I’m haunted by people who I haven’t killed too. I get so deep into some of these nightmares that my power mistakes it as concentration to morph into them. Dione was the only Caster who showed any sympathy. June doesn’t care, and Stanton thought it made me weak.”

“You’re not weak,” I say. “The strongest power above all is a living heart, right?”

“You pushing your brother’s campaign on me?”

“No. I’m heartbroken because we’re eighteen and we’ve been turned into weapons. You have to lie about being dead so your father won’t find you. You had to manipulate your way to safety. You had to kill for a gang you don’t want to be in. It’s only a matter of time until I find blood on my hands too.”

My eyes drift from Ness to the floor as I go off about all the pressure I’ve been under. I unload about all my guilt that’s tied up in Keon’s alchemy. But I talk the most about how I’m being so hard on Ma when she raised me right and gave me a home. It still feels impossible to forgive her since learning I’m not a biological Rey came right after another devastating surprise that has truly upended my life. Everything that’s happened the past three weeks is so wild. I crack and cry so hard that I wish anyone, even a stranger like Ness, would take me in their arms and lie to me about how it’s all going to be okay.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Ness asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe because I’m freaking out about how to be a good brother and a good son and a good best friend and a good hero, and you’re the only person not expecting anything from me.”

There’s something about his silence that pulls more words out of me. It reminds me of whenever I was upset as a kid and Dad would ask me what was wrong, and I would swear that I didn’t want to talk about it, but he kept me company until I eventually burst and got everything off my chest.

“I wonder what my dad would think about me today,” I say.

Before Ness can ask me about him or tell me to go away so he can eat his microwaved pancakes in peace, I tell him all about how accepting Dad was. He never questioned my sexuality and was quick to encourage me to shoot my shot with Nicholas because maybe I would marry my high school crush like he did. He made sure I never felt inferior whenever Brighton’s report cards were glowing and mine were disappointing.

“I really miss him, but maybe it’s a good thing he’s dead. He won’t have to watch me turn into someone I don’t want to be.”

“I think the same with my mother,” Ness says. “I grew up wanting to be an actor. We used to go to musicals and movies, and I felt this . . . this pull to be on stages and sets. Broadway, blockbusters, indies. All of it. We ran lines for school plays while our driver took me to acting classes an hour away. If she knew how much I was using all those lessons as a Caster, she would’ve told me to forget my dreams like the Senator did.”

Losing Dad at seventeen was hard enough, but I can’t imagine losing either of my parents at thirteen like Ness did.

“What was it like when she died?”

“Confusing,” Ness says after a beat. “It was so sudden, and the Senator told me how to feel—anger, hate, disgust. He forced me to grieve in front of cameras. I was a poster boy for children who lost loved ones because of celestial violence, and I leaned into that role because it’s the only way I got support from the Senator. Don’t get it twisted, I’m not talking about hugs. Handshakes on some days and pride on others. But it was something to fill that emptiness my mother left behind.”

I tell him I’m sorry for his loss, even though it’s too many years too late.

“You too,” Ness says. “You’re lucky that your last living parent loves you so much that she protected you at all costs. Mine threw me into the fire.”

He gets up and sits in the center of the room. It feels like an invitation, and I do the same. This time I’m able to breathe in the smell of the cheap lavender soap we’ve stocked in the bathrooms, and it settles my nerves like a well-lit candle.

“What was it like losing your father?” Ness asks.

I tell him how it was confusing too, even though we had months to prepare. Sometimes Dad pretended he was healthy, but we couldn’t play along when he was coughing up blood and had fevers burning so hot we would rush him to the hospital. Going to school was brutal because we didn’t know if he would still be alive when we got home. When it was looking beyond hopeless—wills were signed, goodbyes were had—the doctors suggested it couldn’t hurt to explore clinical trials. Except it did hurt, and the blood poisoning blindsided us all—especially Brighton, who will never be fully right after finding Dad dead.

“You’re lucky you’ve got your whole immortality thing going on, firefly.”

“You think it’s luck? This infinity cycle is a curse. It hasn’t even been a month, and I can’t look in the mirror because I don’t see this savior, this chosen one, this hero that the Spell Walkers are counting on me to be. I’m not trying to fight for the rest of my life—the rest of my lives.”

“But my mother would be alive if we could all be immortal,” Ness says. “Your father too.”

“You think immortality is a solution to the world’s problems?”

“I don’t believe in the world anymore. This country is about to elect my father—the Senator—as their president, and no one with powers will be safe. It’s only a matter of time until he discovers I’m alive, and he would have me executed to protect his image. That lifelong security of yours would be welcomed. I could run forever from the Senator and Luna and live my life.”

“Running and fighting forever isn’t life,” I say.

“It’s better than death,” he says.

I don’t get where all this is coming from, but this sounds like a nightmare. “I don’t want to lose loved ones, Ness, but I also don’t trust a world where we can’t die. To be hunted or tortured forever.”

Ness’s amber eyes are fixed on me. “You’re lying if you say you would give up resurrecting if you could.”